Comparative Research Paper Rough Draft

 Introduction

Colonialism has been present in nearly all of the societies of the world in some form since it’s conception and spread across the world. It even has it’s roots in Cinema with films such as Avatar, and District 9. How do the portrayals of colonialism differ in these two films? Both of these films show different forms of Colonialism and how it can affect the plot or even be a main point in the plot of a film. In James Cameron’s Avatar we see the classic postcolonial plot of the White Savior: A white person, normally a male, comes to the aid of a “lesser” race out of the goodness of his heart and not only helps them but becomes the leader of them. In the other case Neill Blomkamp's District 9 we see different types of colonialism but in particular is one known as Settler Colonialism: A type of colonialism where a foreign group moves into the space previously inhabited by its natural inhabitants, who are normally forced out in favor of these foreign settlers. I will be expanding on these in detail using information from both the films themselves and the various sources I have found.

The effects of colonialism in film has been heavily apparent in almost every genre of film in some form, mostly due to colonialism having led to much of the world becoming westernized in different shapes and forms. Post-Colonialism is examining the effects of colonialism on the the world as a whole and the effects on smaller things such as film. We can see the effects that colonialism has had in Cinema in films like Avatar or District 9, but also in different films without sci-fi settings that might just directly take place in the time of colonialism or even in the present. “In Samson and Delilah the eponymous characters live in poverty, they do not attend school, and they are ignored or held in disdain by the white characters” (Zellhuber-McMillan). Post-colonialism films are commonly shown to focus somewhat on race, as race is probably the biggest issue from colonialism that we still see in large scale effect. Other effects still exist, but race is the biggest one that never seems to go away despite the further and further down the timeline of the world we travel. Both Avatar and District 9 have a focus on race, either as a plot element or a main focus of the message trying to be conveyed.

Avatar

“The White Messiah” is a term coined to describe the type of plot we see in James Cameron’s Avatar. A singular white male comes to the aid of a tribe of “lesser” people and not only saves them, but rises as their leader despite normally having only been there for a short period of time. This story has been repeated time after time with different films: The Last Samurai, Dances With Wolves, even a widely known film such as Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom has it in the form of the Indian peasants that are saved from the cult that has been sacrificing them. In Avatar, we see it take the form of the main character Jake Sully. Sully is part of a group of soldiers and scientists from Earth that have come to the alien world of Pandora to colonize the planet and harvest its resources, making the of man made bodies called Avatars that resemble the natives known as the Na’Vi.  Sully is a white male that turns against his human allies to save the Na’vi from destruction, coming to become the one to lead the attack despite being largely a part of what has been happening to them up until this point.

Why do we continue using this tired plot, repeated time after time and year after year, Is it because it’s familiar, or does the reasoning behind it run deeper? This endless recycling of the same plot is one of the effects colonialism has had, bringing people to accept that the tribes of people are lesser than a white man and couldn’t possibly save themselves. David Brooks hammers the point home in his article The Messiah Complex: “It rests on the stereotype that white people are rationalist and technocratic while colonial victims are spiritual and athletic. It rests on the assumption that non whites need the White Messiah to lead their crusades.”

What the humans are trying to do to Pandora is clearly meant to be a representation of what many European countries did when they began to colonize other landmasses. They came in and occupied the territory, taking it from the natives and began harvesting materials and using the people for their own gain. The film resonates with the ideas put forth by Hana Shams Riazuddin in the article Why Avatar is a truly Dangerous film: Riazuddin states that the Na’vi in Avatar are only truly seen as people by the viewer after certain events that only happen thanks to the interaction of the humans. That the romance between Neytiri and Sully is a tool that fully humanizes the Na’vi, who in the design of the film can only be human within the restraints of colonialism (Riazuddin.)

Overall the Na’vi in the film are presented as both helpless before the humans with Sully, and not even as people without the injection of Sully to allow the audience to truly see them as humans. This ontop of the film trying to present a storyline where the people are saved from being colonized, all while the plot itself is a tool that was created from colonial ideas.

District 9

Apartheid and the segregation it brought to South Africa are rarely the plot of big block busters that do well worldwide, yet Neill Blomkamp’s District 9 managed to do just that. A strange alien ship appears above Johannesburg in 1982, doing nothing but floating there. Inside the humans find a ship over populated and filled with shrimp like aliens that are eventually given the title of Prawn by the people of Johannesburg. These aliens live among the people of Johannesburg for years, confined to a small shanty town known as District 9 until one day the population has gotten too big and they have to be moved. The rest of the plot follows a bureaucrat named Wikus van de Merwe after his contact with a strange alien substance has him begin a slow and graphic transformation into a Prawn.

The Prawn being confined to a separate area away from normal people is a clear reference to the segregation caused by apartheid, Distract 9 itself is a reference to a place that had at one point been found in Cape Town known as District 6. “While it was known primarily as a so-called Colored community, it was also home to a large Jewish population, and it is not a romantic exaggeration to say that Muslims, Christians, blacks, and whites all lived together in relative harmony.” (Johnson). Eventually this mixed community was torn apart piece by piece by the laws put up during Apartheid until it was made a whites only community in 1966 and all the others forced out. The valuable lands were taken from all but the whites, the others being forced out. We can see this in the repositioning of the Prawns from District 9 and to a new location, under the excuse that it is due to the rampant overpopulation. These actions very heavily resemble a type of colonialism known as Settler Colonialism, where the original inhabitants are forced out so that the new settlers might move in. While the Prawn are not native to Johannesburg, they are still being forcibly removed from a place that had been their home for 28 years, at the behest of the government and people of Johannesburg. This removes the unsightly prawn from view of the people in the city while also having the added benefit of freeing up the space that District 9 exists in, a striking parallel to District 6.

District 9 is a sci-fi action film that serves as a vehicle for a story that reminds people of Apartheid and the grip it had on South Africa for decades, and the echos and effects it has had on it ever since. The shadows of settler colonialism and Apartheid are hardly the only colonial theme that it covers, as it also covers one that Avatar relies on for it’s entire plot.

Both

You can also bring in the concept of the White Messiah plot to District 9 as well. Just like in Avatar we see a white character transformed into another type of being, a Prawn in Wikus’ case and a Na’vi Avatar in Sully’s case. Both of these men find themselves thrust into an alien world and experiencing a transformation from it, and find themselves trying to help the aliens for differing reasons. Sully is doing it out of a belief that it is what is right, that the Na’vi are just and right and should be protected, while Wikus does what he does purely out of selfish reasons to try and save himself. Both plots that are examples of the White Messiah, that the races being protected or helped could not defend themselves and required someone else to save them. Sully views the Na’vi as an outsider, capable of keeping his sense as a human seperate for much of the film before he chooses to willingly give it up to stay with the Na’vi, while Wikus gradually loses his humanity as the film goes by until in the end he is left as a prawn.

Both Avatar and District 9 cover different aspects of colonialism, and share some of them as well. They both show aspects of the White Messiah plot, but the motivations for the leading characters are completely different. Avatar features an active attempt to colonize another planet and it’s people in an effort to take their resources, while District 9 features a plot that brings to mind the segregation of Apartheid and even echos actual historical events that happened in Cape Town with settler colonialism. Both of these films have colonialism as a plot, but focus on it in different ways:

District 9 immediately focuses on it by presenting a situation very close to post-colonial South Africa Apartheid, these comparisons being very easy to make for anyone who took a world history class.

Avatar presents itself as a sci-fi action film, the colonial ideas taking a back seat to the special effects the film presents. The spectacle is the first and main attraction of the film and while the effects of colonialism can be seen in the plot in the way of it being an attempt to colonize another group and the White Messiah context, I feel you couldn’t have anyone just watch the film and understand these implications.

Did this do well in explaining the different ways colonialism is portrayed in these two films? Leave a comment if you think I did, and if not leave one explaining what I can do better.

Works Cited

Brooks, David. “The Messiah Complex.” NYTimes, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/08/opinion/08brooks.html?em. Accessed 20 March 2017.

Riazuddin, Hana Shams. “Why Avatar is a Truly Dangerous Film.” Ceasefire Magazine, https://ceasefiremagazine.co.uk/why-avatar-is-a-truly-dangerous-film/ . Accessed 20 March 2017.

Zellhuber-McMillan, Ellena. “A Beginner’s Guide to...Post-Colonial Cinema.” One Room With A View,  https://oneroomwithaview.com/2015/05/27/beginners-guide-post-colonial-cinema/. Accessed 20 March 2017.

Johnson, Scott. “The Real District 9: Cape Town’s District 6.” Newsweek, http://www.newsweek.com/real-district-9-cape-towns-district-six-78939. Accessed 20 March 2017.

Dominguez-Chio, Amanda. “District 9: A Post-Colonial Analysis.” The Artifice, https://the-artifice.com/district-9-post-colonial-analysis/. Accessed 20 March 2017.